quick response: With no distractions, some songs make me feel lots emotion (excitement, sadness, aggression - but not exactly) that I can't really describe, and so I can only say in my head, "holy $4!t".
now what I actually want to say, but you may want to sleep through: I only just started caring about what sort of headphones I use to listen to music. I've acquired a pair of marshmallows and sr60s in the last six months because of what I've read on this board.
The marshmallows took good songs and made them great for me. (I had ibuds.) I'd shake uncontrollably (not like a seizure, but kinda like two red-bulls) and feel excited. I attributed the my enjoyment to the headphone's quality. So I looked for headphones that would make the listening experience better, and decided on the sr60s. The sr60s didn't feel like much of an improvement though. The same songs that made me so excited, were empty now. So I went back to the marshmallows. This kinda confused me for a while. Everyone loves their sr60s; I did not. But when I listened to the sr60s later one night, they were amazing.
They did what the marshmallows did for me, but better.
It may have been because I was tired/delirious and alone in a quiet dark room, and therefore more affectable. But I think it was the room's quietness.
I've decided, night time = quiet. IEMs = quiet. So it was the quietness that was making the songs so powerful. Background noise really ruined the songs for me. "eliminate distractions + quality = emotions" . Now I've ordered the er6i, and hope my hypothesis holds true.
End of anecdote.
Maybe OP's friend experienced something like this without realizing it. I was surprised by my experience because everyone talked about closed headphones and IEMs as a matter of practicality. Anyone else notice something like this, where the song and headphones matter less, and your sound environment matters more? This isn't to say that the headphones are unimportant, but that sacrificing audio quality by choosing an IEM over open headphones should be advocated or atleast explained more often.
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Yes, it was a long post with many somewhat off-the-wall ideas - maybe because I've read 6 months without posting and because I wasn't aware of this when I decided on the sr60s or maybe because this thread was posted before I started reading the board or maybe because jaw007 post was short.[/size]